December
16, 2009 - Last week, “House and Senate negotiators reached
agreement this week on a 2010 omnibus spending bill that includes $18.7
billion for NASA — a $942 million increase over the agency's 2009
budget — and includes a provision that would prevent the agency from
scaling back or canceling its current human spaceflight activities in
the absence of formal legislative approval from congressional
appropriators. “http://www.space.com/news/sn-091211-nasa-spending-bill.html

The
Moon Society applauds this decision but with some reservations. We
believe that an international effort to launch a new era of human
exploration of the Moon would be much more robust, and resistant to
budget cuts, than the present go-it-alone plan. This would be in line
with our International Lunar Research Park proposal.

In that
light, Congress should instruct NASA to welcome overtures from other
space-faring nations who may wish to collaborate in one larger lunar
initiative. Previously, NASA had rejected a request for a joint
moonbase effort with Russia. Congress, not NASA, should be in charge of
decisions to collaborate or not to do so with other nations.

We
also believe that NASA should take the lead in forcing NASA to rely
more and more on commercial space service providers. We believe that
significant economies would be realized if NASA purchased commercial
launch company launch services, not only to bring needed hardware to
Low Earth Orbit, but to bring it all the way to the lunar surface.

Space-X
current round of successes demonstrates the power of competition. Its
Dragon Cargo capsule should begin service to the International Space
Station in the coming year, and a 7-person man-rated version is not far
behind. A version of that could replace NASA’s yet-o-fly Orion capsule
at considerable savings. Several commercial companies have plans for
manned moon landers and bases.

While the established
contractors such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin have significant
capacities and many years of experience. they also have a way of doing
business, in response to NASA requirements, that guarantees
unnecessarily expensive solutions.

The Moon Society recently endorsed Buzz Aldrin’s plan for an Lunar Infrastructure Development Corporation.
It is high time to abandon the Apollo direct route to the Moon, based
on the self-fulfilling expectation that only a few missions would be
flown. If we are to open the Moon to an ever-increasing amount of
activity, then it is essential, in order to cut costs, to build way
stations along the way. Refueling capacities in LEO and at the
Earth-Moon L1 location, could start small as automated or teleoperated
facilities. As traffic grows, they could expand, add repair facilities,
personnel transfer capacities, and become permanently manned.

In
addition, we need to stop junking each stage as its precious cargo is
passed on. Everything reaching low Earth Orbit should be designed to be
reused at that location in one capacity or another. The same should
apply to everything reaching L1 but not needed for the descent to the
Moon. We are talking about spent rocket stages, farings, and residual
fuels. With a little forethought and ingenuity and planned recycling,
it would cost relatively little to build up these way stations so that
they would grow with the traffic. If we do so, the cost per pound
delivered to the Moon’s surface, could begin to drop significantly.

Earth’s
economy has already become “metropolitan” or “metro-orban” as it has
expanded to the “suborbs.” In 2008, $139 billion of services were
provided by satellites alone, much of it in Geosynchronous Earth Orbit.
The world economy is already meta-global. Indeed, the space services
sector is expanding at 11% a year, outpacing the surface-based economy.

Given
access to lunar resources, the GEO-based business sector could explode,
with giant condo-satellite platforms each hosting up to hundreds of
communications, weather, GPS, and TV-home broadcasting packages in the
same limited number (180) of orbital slots, two degrees apart. Add to
that Solar Power Satellites and Power Relay Satellites, and the rise of
an Earth-Moon econosphere appears to be a natural outgrowth of the
present GEO-based economic sector.

Business, not governments
and businessmen, not scientists, will drive this expansion of the human
world outward. Given this plan, a logical extension of what has already
clearly begun, we need to bring Congress and the Administration up to
speed. It is more important to enable space business than to enable
NASA.

The Moon will remain a subject of intense scientific
interest for as far as we can see into the future. There is a place for
NASA and other science-driven agencies on the Moon, just as there is
for continued scientific activity here on Earth. And there is a need to
extend the paradigm of National Parks, Monuments, and Nature Preserves
as we expand human presence outward, to guarantee that our frontier
presence on the Moon and other bodies is a respectful one.

As we
are slowly learning to rise to the occasion as Stewards of our home
planet, we need to open the lunar frontier with stewardship as a
driving principle. Our vision for the Moon goes well beyond
establishment of a handful of science stations, well beyond that of an
outer-Antarctica. It is essential that the Moon Society lead the drive
to sell this expanded vision to the public and to those who represent
us in the government.